


Oh Holy Night

by Tator



Series: can i be, like, megatron? [5]
Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Christmas, Future Fic, Hanukkah, Kid Fic, M/M, overlapping holiday shenanigans, the Schreibners are Jewish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21908347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tator/pseuds/Tator
Summary: “They’re with David and his parents this morning,” Matteo replies, screwing his face to the side and hoping that this didn’t disappoint her too much, not having the kids around and only singing to him in the audience. “They only visit once or twice a year, so I didn’t want to take them away.”“Oh, right,” she says and squeezes at his hand in a reassuring way. “They’re in for the holidays, you told me that.”“Hanukkah, yeah. You’re still going to spend the day with us though, right?”or the one where Hanukkah and Christmas overlap and Matteo just wants everyone to be happy
Relationships: Matteo Florenzi/David (Druck)
Series: can i be, like, megatron? [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551631
Comments: 8
Kudos: 107





	Oh Holy Night

**Author's Note:**

> for the request: _hi! I love your writing! I was wondering, as it’s near Christmas, please would you do something along the lines of a future fic with them on Christmas Day and the kids waking David and Matteo up and opening presents or something, thanks! 💖_
> 
> part of my [future fic universe](https://bagels-and-seagulls.tumblr.com/tagged/future%20fic)

Matteo made his way up to the front of the church that used to mean a lot more to him than it did now and took a deep breath as he pushed his way through the large doors, immediately hit with a sense of nostalgia and the usual melancholy that sprouted up whenever he visited here after too long. He stands just in the entrance, rocking between his feet as a couple of people smile at him in a polite and meaningless sort of way as he scans the crowd. He spots his mother up near the front, talking to an elderly woman and putting a hand on her shoulder as she smiles at her. Matteo takes another breath. 

“Hey, Mama,” he greets as he comes up to her, fiddling with a scrap of receipt paper in his coat pocket as she turns around to see him. 

“Matteo,” she says with a bright smile and engulfs him into a hug instantly, tapping him on the back a couple of times in a way that always made him want to close his eyes. “Where are my little darlings?” She asks, looking back towards the front of the church, gripping onto his shoulders, like the kids were about to rush in any moment with a tired David following closely behind, which has happened before. 

“They’re with David and his parents this morning,” Matteo replies, screwing his face to the side and hoping that this didn’t disappoint her too much, not having the kids around and only singing to him in the audience. “They only visit once or twice a year, so I didn’t want to take them away.” 

“Oh, right,” she says and squeezes at his hand in a reassuring way. “They’re in for the holidays, you told me that.” 

“Hanukkah, yeah. You’re still going to spend the day with us though, right?” 

“Of course, darling,” she says and pinches his cheek just so he’ll bat her away, and it helps. He’s sure she knows that. “I have to go to the choir now though,” she says and nods her head over shoulder. Matteo nods and tries to find a spot in the pews that isn’t too close to anyone else, which didn’t seem too likely as everyone in the city seemed to be trying to get a stamp in their Good Christian Passport today by finally showing up to a service. 

Matteo makes it through the pastor’s yelling about the holiest time of the year, a couple of songs where he smiles up at his mother even though someone in the choir was a little bit flat, and the uncomfortable children’s rendition of the nativity scene where baby Jesus was screaming the entire time and one of the toddlers that was set to be an old wise man kept trying to wonder off the stage. 

_the kids better be grateful i never let mama convince us to be in these church plays,_ he texts to David when he thinks no one is looking, but he catches a father with two kids sat beside him giving him the stink eye out the corner of his eye. Matteo glares back a little more openly, keeping his phone right in his hand, because he knows for a fact that this man didn’t know any of the words to the psalms they were signing earlier, mumbling around like a bull in a china shop, so he wasn’t about to guilt him for fucking texting. 

Matteo takes another breath. 

_There’s still time,_ comes the reply a few minutes later once everyone was carefully clapping at the children’s less than perfect rendition, and Matteo was starting to count down the minutes before he was allowed to get out of here. 

_Michael would make a handsome Joseph,_ David adds, and Matteo snorts into the back of his hand. The dad makes some sort of noise and squares his shoulders, and Matteo turns towards him with a look on his face that said if wanted to start something in the church right now, Matteo wouldn’t stop it. The dad backs down, and Matteo rolls his eyes. 

The pastor wraps up the service shortly afterwards, reminding everyone of their normal service times and that everyone was welcome to come on days other than Christmas, maybe this Sunday if the religious zeal of the season was affecting them at all . His joke falls kind of flat, but everyone laughs a little stilted anyways because it felt a little bit like it was required. 

Matteo finds his mother again after most of the hall has cleared out, the irregulars making a quick escape before the pastor makes their way over to them and finds a way to guilt them into coming back when they both know that they don’t really intend to. “Ready to go?” He asks as he sees her fiddling with her coat. 

“Yes,” she replies with a smile. “Can we stop by my apartment first? I have a few gifts I wanted to give the kids.” 

“Lead the way,” he says and gestures towards the door. 

“Should I make something for tonight?” She asks as they walk down the street, and Matteo feels the cold a little more than he usually does, wrapping his scarf a little tighter around his neck and stuffing his hands further into his pockets to fight off the chill. “I know how to make latkes.” 

“You do?” 

Mama nods. “A woman at work taught me. Lucy, if you remember.” 

Matteo squints, and watches as a man accidentally drops a bag of groceries right onto the pavement with a curse. “The blonde one?” 

“No, no, that’s Isaballe,” she corrects, waving her hand out in front of her. “Lucy is the redhead.” 

Matteo shrugs and doges out of the way of a family of six that were rushing down the street with the mom barking out orders for the kids to all hold hands. "I’m in charge of dinner tonight,” he says. “David and I agreed before everything got too crazy that we’ll do whatever his parents want while they’re here, but today we’re lighting the menorah and then having Christmas duck like always. If Alda wants to make something afterwards, she’s welcome, but they’ve been very understanding of the whole overlap situation.” 

“That’s good,” she hums mostly to herself. “I burn latkes every time anyways,” she adds with a theatrical whisper. Matteo snorts. 

They make it to her apartment without too much hubbub, only having to stop once or twice as Mama points to something in a closed shop window to ask Matteo’s opinion on it, not that he had much of one anyways, and they make their way back home. “Have you called your father today?”

“ _Mama_ ,” Matteo huffs and tries to shut down the conversation before she starts. 

“What?” She says, looking over at him with her eyes wide and her eyebrows raised like she was shocked at Matteo’s dislike of the topic. “He’s your father. Today is a day based on forgiveness and love. You should call him.” 

“I thought that was Easter.” 

“Doesn’t matter,” she replies with an easy shrug. “It’s the holidays all the same.”

“I sent him a message saying I would be home later if he wanted to talk to the kids. He hasn’t responded,” he explains. 

“Typical,” she says under her breath. 

“Typical,” he agrees.

They make their way up to the apartment, and Matteo calls out a cautious “Hello?” from the door, not really remembering what the morning plans were supposed to be or when anyone was supposed to get back. 

Sofia pokes her head around the corner. “Grandma!” She yells, and Matteo knows to get out of her way as he bum rushes her with her head landing somewhere into Mama’s ribs as Sofia wraps her arms around her and squeeze her tight. Mama stumbles back a few steps and looks widely at Matteo who just shrugs and smiles in response, knowing the other two were making their way over by the quick sound of footsteps that were coming towards the front door. 

“Grandma!” Both Michael and Matilda repeat with an equal amount of enthusiasm and go to rush at her too, and Matteo reminds himself that they saw her two weeks ago, if that, though they always have this level of energy when she comes around. He vaguely thinks about the way they carefully hugged David’s parents when they picked them up from the train station and very politely said their hello’s and how are you’s as if this was the first time they had ever met them. 

“My little darlings!” Mama responds with a bright laugh. 

“Alright, alright, don’t suffocate Grandma, you guys,” Matteo interrupts after a few moments and goes to pull at their shirts to get them to let go. “Get inside. Come on,” he shuffles them all along in order to give Mama enough time to take off her shoes and coat. 

He ushers them all into the living room where the rest of the family seemed to be resting from a morning out, or at least sitting around for the moment, twirling their thumbs, thinking of something to do that wouldn’t be too awkward for anyone. David is the first one to get up to greet them, kissing Mama on the cheek and saying hello before giving Matteo a quick peck on the lips, still antsy about too much affection in front of his parents. 

“Marie,” Laura greets with a smile and gets up to hug her. 

“Let me take these,” Matteo says, taking Mama’s bags from her as she smiles over to Laura. 

“Laura,” she says and hugs her close like they were old freinds. “How are you, my dear?” 

“I’m good,” she responds with an equally warm sort of feeling in her eyes. 

“Alda and Henry, how are you two?” Mama asks as she lightly hugs Alda in greeting and gingerly shakes at Henry’s hand. Matteo doesn’t know the last time they were all in the same room together, the parents and the in-laws and the siblings. Maybe when Matilda came home with them for the first time, and David’s parents were still desperately trying to reinsert themselves into their children’s lives, unhappy with the way their relationships had slipped into an apathetic sort of duty on either end. Maybe it was the wedding before when they only maybe said four words to anyone that wasn’t each other, Matteo and David so busy wrapped up in each other, they had almost forgotten there were other people in the entire world with them. Either way, it had been a while. 

They exchange pleasantries, and Matteo suddenly feels uncomfortable, standing in the middle of his own living room, not really knowing what to say to help move the conversation along as everyone is looking at each other, waiting for someone to fill the silence with something that was neutral territory for everyone. Not politics. Or the past. Or childhood stories of their children. But David, charismatic and social David who works through landmines for a living, breaks the silence as he grips onto Matteo’s hand. “Did you guys want to give Grandma her gift?” 

“Oh, a gift?” She asks with a little bit of play in her voice as she looks at between all of the children, who all look back up at her with grins that stretched ear to ear. “For me?” 

“Yeah, for Christmas,” Michael says as he goes over to their Christmas tree shoved in the corner of the room that was put together last minute by Matteo when he realized that Mama would be a little sad if she didn’t see the ornaments she gave David and Matteo every year since they first moved into their first apartment together and fishes out the last gift wrapped neatly under the tree. “Here,” he says and shoves the small package into her hands.

Mama opens it carefully, eyeing Matteo and David the whole time, who just shrug both in response, pointing to the children like they were the ones that got the gift for her, which really, it was Matilda’s idea in a round about sort of way. “Oh,” she says as she opens. “This is just beautiful,” she says as pulls the silver charm bracelet out of box. 

“It’s got our initials on it. Look,” Sofia says and points to the dangling letters, each with a little stone at the top. “S for me, and the two M’s for Micha and Matty.” 

“Well, isn’t that just lovely,” she says, wrapping it around her wrist with something a little thick in the back of her throat, but Matteo thinks he was the only one to notice that. “Now you guys can go with me where ever I go.” 

The kids all make some sort of noises in agreement. 

“I’m going to get started on the food,” Matteo mutters to David. “Did you guys have things to do?” 

“Well, the entire city is practically closed, so we were going to find some winter themed movies,” David responds, keeping his voice pitched low and leaning in close towards Matteo. 

“Winter themed, got it,” Matteo replies. “Good luck with that. Last I checked, Frozen didn’t have too many religious themes going on.” 

“Too bad we already watched that one, hm?” David asks with a tight smile. 

Matteo snorts and heads to the kitchen, passing by Mama and squeezing her on the shoulder as he goes. She smiles in response and let’s the kids pull her further into the living room. 

He wastes time around the kitchen. He knows that he’s making things take a little bit longer than they should, only occasionally calling for one of the children to bring some snacks back to the others when he thinks that his lack of presence might be brought to someone’s attention and lord forbid, everyone started coming into the kitchen to talk to him or keep him company when he wasn’t really looking for any of it. He feels like a bad son sometimes, or a bad dad, when he thinks too hard around it, about how he needs a couple of hours to himself even on days that were so important to so many people, just so he can take a little while to breathe, but at the same time, he’s had people coming in and out of his house for days now, keeping his kids energy levels up at the same time their keeping David’s stress a little too high, trying to keep everyone happy, and occupied, and entertained, and like this wasn’t going to be a waste of a trip. Matteo’s never been too good with family relations, he’ll be the first to admit it. 

“Did you need any help?” David asks after a while too long since Matteo has called into the living room as Matteo is slowly peeling potatoes with the paring knife, not being able to find his peeler anywhere right now. Not that he looked too hard, realizing the peeler would probably save him about twenty seconds per potato. 

“Depends,” Matteo shrugs. “Are you asking because you genuinely think I need help? Or because you’re looking for a way out of dealing with the family for a few minutes?” 

“Uh, both?” David responds with forced smile that looks a bit like he got caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. 

“Well, the bird’s already in the oven, and everything else is just waiting for its turn to heat up, so,” Matteo shrugs again, racking his brain for a way that David can do something productive. “You can slice the potatoes if you want.” 

David hops to it, both of them quietly working away at the potatoes, just okay with breathing close to each other for a minute, even though really Matteo could have this dish done in twenty minutes if he wanted to. They both look towards the door when they hear the kids start squealing with laughter from the other room. 

“At least everyone is getting along,” Matteo says, looking up at David quickly before turning back to the potatoes. 

“Easy when you have kids to distract you.” 

“Especially ones with personalities as big as ours, huh?” 

David laughs. “Yeah, that helps,” he says. “Still, I’m glad that the whole Christmas and Hanukkah thing isn’t too weird yet.” 

“Well it wasn’t like our parents were going to be dicks about it.” 

“No,” David agrees. “But it could have been a lot more awkward than it’s been so far.” 

Matteo hums and shrugs with just one shoulder, not really knowing what to say because yeah, it could have been really awkward, and yeah, there’s still a chance that it will be. The night was young after all. 

“The kids want to teach Mama dreidel after dinner,” David says after a beat. 

“Oh, she’ll love that,” Matteo smiles in the corners of his mouth. 

They peel at the potatoes for a while longer, a while longer than they really needed to, scrapping off every part of the skin that they could find. “Set the table,” Matteo asks and points over as he manages to fit everything in the oven through a strategic game of casserole tetris he’s perfected over the years. 

“Fuck,” David mutters to himself, and Matteo snickers as David tries to fit eight chairs around a table that was really only made for four comfortably and five if they were pushing it. “We should’ve done this at Laura’s. She’s got a real dining room table,” he says, though Matteo doesn’t sympathize with him at all, even if David was looking for it. 

“Yeah, let her host three night of Hanukkah, including Christmas, in a row and house your parents for a whole week,” he responds. “That seems very fair. Equal distribution of the labor of the holidays.” 

“A real shame we don’t have enough bedrooms for them to stay here,” David says with a little bit of a hum, knowing he didn’t mean even a little bit of it, setting out some plates.

“Truly,” he responds with his tone falling flat before looking around the kitchen without anything else to do. “Okay, dinner is ready.” 

“Dinner is ready!” David repeats louder into the other room. 

“Thank you,” Matteo huffs, rolling his eyes. “So helpful.” David laughs and blows him a kiss. 

“Fuck, what time is it? Should we do the menorah first?” David asks. 

“I mean the suns down. Ask your parents what they want to do,” Matteo responds. 

“Yeah, yeah,” David says and disappears back towards the living room, and Matteo goes to cover all the food to keep it warm. 

“Alright, kiddos, over to the window,” David says, coming back into the room and adjusting the kippah on Michael’s head as he gathers them towards the menorah. 

“What do I do?” Mama asks as she slides up to Matteo’s side as the others come into the kitchen with a low murmur about them. 

“Just stand there quietly,” Matteo says. 

Henry starts off saying the prayers, and Matteo wraps an arm around Mama’s shoulders to pull her close. He bites his lip when he sees Michael staring too intently at the shamash in Henry’s hand to really follow along with what is going on, and by the way David goes to grip at his shoulder to pull him back, he can tell he wasn’t the only one who noticed. 

“Do we sing now?” Sofia asks, looking up at Laura when Henry starts lighting the candles. 

“Almost, let’s finish with the candles first,” Laura whispers, and Sofia nods very seriously, turning back towards the window. 

“Now?” Sofia asks Henry puts the shamash down, and Henry smiles at her. 

“Did you want to start for us?” He asks, and Sofia grins and starts singing a little too quickly and way too loudly, overshadowing everyone else even though she only knew about half of the words and made up the rest of them with an equal amount of volume and enthusiasm as the ones she did know. Michael didn’t even try to sing, instead putting his hands up near the candles only for David to snatch them back when they got too close and hold them firmly in his hands. Matilda was clenching onto Alda’s hand, looking up to her as she mumbled the words to herself, and by the looks of it, Matteo would say she was the only one who knew the words. And the bright smile that Alda was giving her said that she knew that, too. 

They all settle down at the table afterwards, squished too close together and butting elbows every other second as they reach around for their water glasses and forks, adjusting their chairs to try and not knock hips and knees and feet. Matteo ends up half on his own chair and half on David’s, sandwiched between him and Mama, not that he really cared being pressed up against him, not that he thought David cared, not with the way that he was gripping onto Matteo’s knee like it was a lifeline for something. 

“Did you want to pray?” Matteo asks Mama when she hesitates in her spot for a moment. 

“Oh, it’s no bother,” she goes to say with a wave of her hand.

“It’s no bother,” Alda says with a smile and holds out her hand to Mama. Mama smiles and takes it as Matteo looks over to David and grabs his hand and Mama’s at the same time. David smiles back, and Matteo thinks to himself, _well this isn’t so bad_ , as Mama’s asks for blessings for her family. 


End file.
